Manage your subscription

Russia set to approve climate change plan

The Russian government looks set to ratify the Kyoto protocol to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases. Russia’s cabinet voted on Thursday to put the protocol, intended to curb climate change, before the country’s parliament for formal ratification.

This means that if the motion is passed by the State Duma – which is likely – the beleaguered plan will come into legal force across the world in 90 days.

Conservationists have hailed the move. Ratification “will be a significant step forward in the fight against global warming”, says Bryony Worthington, of Friends of the Earth UK.

The protocol, first agreed in Japan in 1997, sets targets for 34 industrialised countries to contain and reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases from 2008.

Advertisement

Russia’s decision is vital because without its ratification the protocol had been doomed. Its complex rules stipulate that it comes into force only when developed countries responsible for 55% of the global emissions caused by industrialised nations ratify the protocol. At present, countries responsible for just over 44 per cent of the emissions have ratified.

Major polluters – the US, Australia and Russia – have held out. The US, though responsible for 36% of the emissions by industrialised countries with targets, has remained implacably opposed. If Russia – which emits 17% of the greenhouse gases vented by developed nations – joins, it would break the threshold needed to enforce the Kyoto plan.

“Forced decision”

For several years Russia had said it would ratify the protocol. But at a world climate conference in Moscow in October 2003, president Vladimir Putin declared that “an increase of two or three degrees wouldn’t be so bad for a northern country like Russia”.

Political factors may have prompted Putin’s decision. In May, Putin promised he would “speed up” approval of the protocol in return for European Union (EU) support for Russian’s bid to join the World Trade Organization.

“It’s not a decision we are taking with pleasure. It is a political decision, a forced decision,” said Andrei Illarioniv, Putin’s economic adviser and an opponent of ratification, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

The protocol requires countries to keep emissions of six greenhouse gases below 1990 levels during an initial compliance period of 2008 to 2012. For example, the EU has to reduce emissions by 8%, while Russia has only to keep them from rising above 1990 levels.

Pollution permits

That should not be hard. Its emissions are currently more than 25% below 1990 levels, following the collapse of the Soviet economy in the early 1990s. Observers say Russia should be able to make money by selling “spare” pollution permits to countries struggling to meet their targets, like Japan.

Russian ratification is likely to kick-start negotiations on much tougher targets after 2012. But crucially it may put pressure on the US to sign. Worthington notes&colon; “It will turn up the heat on the US and Australia who have refused to join international efforts to avoid a global catastrophe. Time is running out. We need urgent international action now.”